John 1:16

It's all broken. It's all rough and jagged, it's unpleasant and repulsive. It sticks to your skin like sweat, it cloys in your lungs like a cloud of poison. You want to put it far away, and shut it up, and block it out. It's hard, so hard that it cuts. Slicing through comfort and contentment and security. It disturbs and unsettles. You cannot evade its effects.

And that moment you realize it's inside of you, it wrecks you. 

But what does He say? "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace." And so He gives, grace upon grace, upon grace upon grace.

Ichthys

I must confess, I'm sometimes a judgmental snob. The guys I work with are lucky they don't care what I think, otherwise they'd never be able to endure my eye-rolling at the massive amounts of soda they consume. I feel justified in judging here: sugar-sweetened beverages are an incorrigible waste of caloric intake. There's not much else I judge "nonbelievers" on, because if they haven't seen the light, how can they hate the darkness? But Christians, I feel like they should know better. And this has been a huge area of sin in my life, so let me just confess . . . I judge Christians who have fish on their cars.

I wanted to be Catholic for a while. Especially when I was doing more pro-life advocacy stuff, that's where I saw a lot of Catholics walking the talk. Christians who are big on grace find ways to live apathetically, but all the Catholics I met put great stock in the power of action. Also, Portsmouth Abbey is beautiful and I can't say being a nun doesn't sound attractive at this phase in my life.

But all that changed when I was driving to church one day. There's a huge Catholic church between my house and my church, and their parking lot is always packed. There are cars on both sides of the road, on both corners. And on this fateful morning, as I was driving by, minding my own business, a car with a fish on their bumper pulled out of this Catholic church and cut me off. I ceased wanting to be a Catholic that day. They were not as perfect as I hoped they could be.

Do not presume me to be hypocritical. I used this ridiculous non-story to make a point. I cut people off sometimes. I'm not good at depth perception or acting quickly or making left-hand turns. I'm a woman, doesn't that mean I'm genetically predisposed to being a terrible driver? But guys, seriously, I don't have a fish on my car. And I exercise extreme caution pulling in and out of my church's parking lot. Because I know the community's watching. And I don't want to be that jerk driver who selfishly asserts herself on the road while representing Jesus to the other drivers around. I know I can't live up to that. 

(Parenthetically, this is why I also never applied the decal my school sent me when I was accepted. The members of the rural community surround my school are not super fond of URI and their reckless boozing ways. I don't want my poor driving skills to make the neighbors even more hostile. If such a thing were even possible.)

I do a lot of driving. Usually around 80 miles a day, five days a week. And almost every day I see someone with a fish on their car. You know what? The driver of that car is usually talking on their cell phone, or pulled out too far into the intersection, or tailgating someone, or running a red light, or driving slowly in the passing lane, or some other such obnoxious and rude driving activity. Of course, this is Rhode Island. This driving behavior is not abnormal or out of the ordinary. But Christians are supposed to be different. Our love for Jesus is supposed to make us responsible and courteous drivers. 

Whenever people flash me the finger for driving too slowly or turning too quickly I thank heavens I don't have a fish on my car. Better they blame me than blame me and Jesus.

A caveat thought here: I know someone who works with a professing Christian who is universally disliked by everyone else in the department. It makes me wonder about testimony, and how to find a balance between living a genuine life and being a good example of the difference Jesus makes. Christians aren't perfect. If anything, we're more sick than most. How do we bring glory to His name without also sullying it? How vocal ought we to be?

In search of clarity

At night I think straight.
I know what I want, what I feel, and how to explain it.
At night I'm opinionated.
I know what I think, and I understand that I don't know anything.
I see clearly at night.
I put to rest all the little things that chafe inside me through the day.
I think my thoughts in circles until I fall asleep.
I imagine the future, and smirk at what I see.
At night I know how silly I am.
I don't take myself too seriously.
I'm self-absorbed but I don't mind.
At night it's the darkness and silence of just God and me.
I can light upon peace and cling to it.
Thank You Lord that Your mercies are new every morning.
. . . so let me wake before dawn.

The Exhausted Argument

As part of my last semester at my degree-granting institution, one of my 400-level senior seminars is a class on conflict intervention. Our final paper is a twelve-page dissemination of a conflict we've experienced or witnessed in the context of the theories we're learning, and heeding the advice of the professor I want to please, I'm thinking about what to write on. The trouble is, I have experienced very few conflicts in my short life. I attribute this to three different factors:

1) I am oblivious. There was this one time one of my friends felt incredibly hurt and neglected by me, and years passed before I realized how she felt. I'm sure I've actually been in the middle of countless conflicts, but was too obtuse to realize it.

2) I am a conflict avoider. It makes me feel physically ill to confront others, and I am squeamish about bad feelings. I often see conflict as a lose-lose, where all parties involve wallow in bad feelings and nobody comes out whole.

3) I mostly know mature and awesome people who are easy to put up with and who put up with a lot from me. With quality friends like these, you won't encounter too many blow-up, drag-out fights. Sure, conflict is inevitable and unavoidable, but with the right group of people conflict can often be less frequent.

When I was the administrator of the NCFCA Region 10 forum, I got my first exposure at mediating conflict. The arguments we had were an interesting mix of behavioral and ideological. It was a forensics forum, and so of course, debate was bound to happen. And as young people are wont to do, there was plenty of pontification on tension points that escalated into idealistic frustration. While I would frequently rebuke other members for what I perceived to be their uncompassionate and imprudent views (you have no idea how deep the self-righteous streak runs, folks!), there was also plenty of peacekeeping to be done in terms of "playing nice." The key was always never being above admitting fault, and the solution was nearly always compromise. 

Resolution is a bit cloudier these days. A particular conflict I see illustrated up-close and personal inside the walls of my house follows a pattern that seems to obscure a silver-bullet solution. Outlawed behavior causes confrontation, which often escalates with rebuttal and analysis. These conflicts reach a kind of resolution, but it's a hollow one because no one holds naive expectations that the outlawed behavior will cease to occur. The cycle persists, sometimes altered on the content level but usually consistent in its subterranean qualities. We all know the conflict's not hopeless, but when change is so imperceptible it's hard to keep up the expectation that the cycle will cease. 

Similarly, these past few months I've been burdened over a conflict that I can't seem to shake. And unlike the conflicts of my strident days on the forum, or the arguments that happen out in the open in my house, this tension is subversive and full of question marks. All that is unspoken fuels my anger and hurt, and yet, talking about it seems to do no good either. I can't understand it, I can't fix it, but I'm having trouble coping with it, too. "Get over it," is what I tell myself, but I often counter with "how?" There's so much I just don't understand.

So through these three examples is where my conflict intervention class comes into play. We just finished up psychological theories of conflict, which focus on individual mental processes that play into conflict. Two theories in particular, verbal aggression & argumentativeness theory and trained incapacities theory, seek to explain patterns of and consistent responses to conflict. And that's where I get hope from. Knowing why people do what they do. When the angry forum private messages ended up in my inbox I remembered dual perspective. When my sister's words cut at my heart I remember her desire to know her value. And when my car rides are consumed with analyzing this recent conflict, I think that maybe, if I devote all my brain power and all these theories to explaining the broken thing weighing on me, maybe I can understand it, and maybe I can stop feeling miserable.

I love Anne Shirley. "But have you ever noticed one encouraging thing about me, Marilla? I never make the same mistake twice." And how badly I want that to be true of me! Nothing frustrates me more than cycles, of hitting the same wall over and over. I get so tired of being the same, of feeling the same feelings and talking about the same topics. This is what makes me a bit of a cynic, because I know ours is a world of systems and circles, that we are beings of order and often we sign away our own freedom, unwittingly chaining ourselves to these cycles that make us miserable. That's the whole idea behind verbal aggression, that it's a personality trait that challenging to tame. Or trained incapacities, which are ingrained maladaptive responses that are difficult to uproot. 

Breaking the cycle is not easy. But staying in the cycle is exhausting. I want out.

I have nothing to say, and I am saying it

I was complimented on my writing today, and it was nice but fleeting. Now that one of my professors begins each class with asking us what we read in the news the day before, I'm becoming more attuned to the exasperated advice my father regaled me with: you learn a lot about the world from reading the Review & Outlook section of the Wall Street Journal. Another professor commended to my perusal Slate Magazine's Double-X section, admitting that though the content is fiercely cynical, there was wit to be imitated in the style. Relevant, Penelope Trunk, The Resurgence, The Altucher Confidential, and the insightful words of those dear people I am privileged to know personally, all of it, I eat it up. So I've been reading more, fascinating things about the commerce clause and the foundations of interpersonal communication research, and the more I read what others have written, the more I think about writing. I want to write. 

But I just have nothing to say.

And part of this is because I've partly choked my gut within me. A weighted sadness has settled in me. I can be cheerful and chipper, and prefer to be, in the presence of others. I look forward to going to work, where I can answer phones and be helpful and laugh with my coworkers about Nicholas Cage movies. I love giggling in the student senate office, and having pool noodle fights after InterVarsity large group meetings. I am privileged to sit in bed reading Curious George aloud, cuddling with an adorable and cheeky little girl. And there's no better reward for a day spent in activity than a few episodes of LOST with my sisters. Each day is a full one, and while these days brim with good stuff, the sadness is always present in my thinking. Always the thinking. The welling existential questions of my soul, my relationships, and my future. Am I taking enough care about the person I'm becoming? 

When my professor complimented my writing, he told me, "It's a God-given skill you have." And hearing those words coming out of the mouth of a stranger in a secular institution gave them new life to me. It is not that I am the smartest. I am not always right, or even accurate. I have no delusions of grandeur. But I can string words together, and I have a lilt that is my own, and maybe I can even purport that writing is something I'm good at. 

So then what? What am I to do with my God-given skill? 

I'm not used to being good at things, and that's the pity when it comes to all the resources that have been poured into me my whole life. I have been ill-practiced in making the most of them. All this opportunity and privilege, but for what? My stewardship is deplorable. The emptiness is dwarfing me.

What good is being able to say something when you have nothing to say? I feel for you, John Cage.

Reader's Digest

Classes have officially begun and I've closed the book on winter break. I went back to school heavy-hearted and whining self-indulgently, missing the balance and freedom winter break had bequeathed to my life. One of the greatest things about break that I'll miss the most during the semester is all the books I was able to inhale. I've missed reading. But I managed to cover some ground this January, and it is immortalized below.

Losing God, by Matt Rogers

One of the books I procured at Urbana for only a dollar, this story describes memoir-style how the author lost his faith at Urbana. Not a resounding commercial for the conference. What it's actually about is his struggle with doubt through his college years, and how his undiagnosed clinical depression complicated and informed his doubts. If you've ever been depressed, or known someone who was depressed, or want to be able to understand the individuals you have yet to meet who face depression, this book is a good place to start. The doubts he discusses resonated with me so much, and though the book starts with a bleak (gut-stabbing, terrorizing . . .) outlook, it culminates in real and honest encouragement. It's a page-turner, not because his story is dramatic or unusual, but because he is able to speak to candidly on a topic very few have addressed.

Blackthorn Winter, by Kathryn Reiss

This was a young adult murder mystery novel my sister got from the library on a whim. It was lame. I mention this for posterity. I spent like five whole days of my winter break on this book. 

Small Things with Great Love, by Margot Starbuck

The most expensive book I got at Urbana for a whopping five bucks, this charmingly sarcastic make-your-own-adventure-style how-to book explains what loving others in God's name practically looks like. What I love about this book how she speaks to the tension between first world living and God's calling, and how to fit kingdom living in with midterms and errands. Wherever your circumstances find you, there's a chapter in this book for you: men or women, introverts or extroverts, rural residents or city dwellers, students or investment bankers. She paints an accessible vision of the vibrance of the gospel, and everyone should read this book. If you couldn't come to Urbana, it is your best substitute. If you did come to Urbana, it will help you funnel all that inspiration into action. This stuff is where it's at, people. Let me know if you want to borrow it.

The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green

It was by sheer kismet that this novel ended up in my possession, thanks to an awesome student from our youth group. (I wish I could say it was a perk of being a youth leader, it's not, it's a side effect of awesome people, THANK YOU ELIZABETH!) While I'm no die-heard John Green fan, he always tackles existential dilemmas very well, and this latest novel was no exception. I didn't like it quite as much as Paper Towns, but I credit this more to the fact that cancer is a reality more distanced from my life. Speaking of which, I would not recommend reading a book about lung cancer while suffering from bronchitis. I felt like I couldn't breathe the whole time. 

A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf

Oh Virginia, I want to be you, minus your fake marriage and unceremonious suicide. But I feel like a major hypocrite here, because though I love To the Lighthouse with an ardent passion, my exposure to her other writings has been minimal if not nonexistent. So winter break was the perfect time to correct this. And lo, though I read her with lover's eyes, she once again proves herself the literary genius she has been lauded to be! And what ho for feminism, she has unfortunately fanned the fires that were arguably dampened by my forays with a feminist interpretation of Dickinson from last semester's literary acoustic class. True, this extended essay is not fiction, so that's kind of rough, but I'm glad her cleverness is not limited to a single genre.

I can't look at my dresser without feeling a certain level of forlornness, from the charming linguistics book I keep saying I'm going to finish and make Michael read (ugh, I swear, I'm almost done, you'll really like it!) to the hefty volume of spy-memoir my dad remarks on every time I crock open a different book. So many books to read, so little time to read them. But I can table them all on account of the stimulating ideas I've been promised to encounter through my courses. They better follow through on those promises; they cost enough. 

Purge

I've been awake since 6am on December 31st. For those keeping track, that's 39 hours and counting. To be entirely accurate, there have likely been patches of lost consciousness in there along the way. I marveled that the day's travels through subways, concourses, flights, terminals, and car rides flew by so quickly, and this is due largely to my body's ability desperate attempts to halt functioning and initiate the REM cycle. Still, I'm dizzy from the blurry signals my eyes are sending to my brain, I'm speaking slowly, and I don't know quite where to begin my re-entry process from the Urbana Student Missions Conference.

Tomorrow class begins, and normal life returns. And so my heart must process and purge now, before its passion is anesthetized by the comfortable routine of activity. 

To obey is better than to fear. On the plane ride from Providence to Newark I was wracked with fear. You can ask the nine year old girl in the row in front of me, she stared at me with disbelief and horror as tears streamed down my cheeks with each bit of turbulence. I was tense in my seat and in absolute misery, under the control of my (irrational?) terror. Catching the Newark to St. Louis flight involved much running and stress and some crying to TSA agents, and I was spent when I finally sank into my sick. I was too tired to be afraid. 

I spent the first full day of Urbana unwittingly mimicking this pattern. Hyperventilating each time I looked at the long list of seminars and exhibitors and prayer ministries and worship experiences and panel discussions and student lounges, I wondered how I could possibly make the most of this expensive trip. I sat in the general session quaking with fear that my selfishness and laziness would subsume my desire for obedience, that I would never be able to authentically respond to any of the invitations presented during the week. I was consumed by (and still fight) the fear of not being powerfully, profoundly changed. 

The book of Luke is filled with invitations, hard challenges of obedience. Let down your nets, follow Him, be fishers of men. Come down from that tree, repay those you've cheated with interest. Go out, take nothing with you, stay in the homes of those you meet, proclaim the kingdom. Deny your home, deny your family, leave everything. Seek and save the lost. Repent. The charge Jesus has for those who seek to follow Him no small order of half-hearted devotion. It is all-in, go-hard, drop-dead sacrifice. Comprehensive surrender. 

. . . I mean, yikes. Never mind the fear latent in a hunk of metal soaring thousands of feet above the ground through inclement weather and turbulence. Fear of flying is trivial compared to the commissioning of an all-powerful holy Savior. Fear is asking my coworkers to grab froyo with me, fear is hosting a Luke study with my friends who aren't believers, fear is cold-calling missions agencies looking for opportunities to minister to immigrants. Fear is showing up on a foreigner's doorstep and presumptuously asking if there's anything you can do for them. I CAN'T DO THIS STUFF GUYS. I CAN'T. The truth of this overwhelms me. A fuller revelation of my slavery to fear incapacitated my heart.

But oh, the light broke through. I love Him, and how could I not? How tenderly He seeks the one who was lost, how willingly He bore the wrath I deserved, how faithfully He stands before the Father to advocate on my behalf. He picked this trash from the gutter and in loving me He gave me real worth. He is a beautiful Jesus, and in the face of this Love I am compelled to love Him back. Is it not better to rejoice in my salvation, to act upon His promptings, to stride forward boldly in His callings than to cower in a cage of my own devising? Is it not better to go and do, because He says so, and because He is good? Why waste time tense in my seat when I am free to relax and enjoy the ride? It is not that the sacrifice is not difficult, but rather that the honor is so much greater. To obey is better than to fear. 

"How can I stand here with You and not be moved by You? Would You tell me, how could it be any better than this?"

Psalm 139:24

This has been a week of lots of feelings. Reunions with old friends, finishing up finals, navigating frustrating bureaucracies, making plans, holiday and Urbana anticipation, presents, addressing failures, watching AYOQ (which has reunited for a week!), meeting new people, combating laziness. It's been dripping with feeling. I started sobbing yesterday because I climbed up too high on a ladder and couldn't get down. Clearly I was super stable. (Pun mercilessly intended. ;P)

But through the broad variety of wonderful and horrible things I've been feeling, the most dominant emotion is probably anxiety. And the worst thing about anxiety is that it is irrational but all-consuming. It's knowing that you're crazy, but you can't stop the craziness taking up residence inside you and yanking on all the strings. Maybe it's because I was a worry wart as a child. My mom used to joke I was going to give myself an ulcer over my profound fear of arriving places too early or too late. I know now that worrying is bad for me, so I try to avoid it.

Still, I'm so overwhelmed by all these feelings I feel! I want to bury myself in mindless digital media, and then sleep until I've out-slept all the opportunities and all the consequences. It helps clear out the confusion, and it's really the confusion that makes me anxious and overwhelmed. And it's tricky because this is a layered, contorted confusion that is both holistic and self-referential. I don't know anything. I don't know what to do about anything. 

But I find this is what I do every time I'm overwhelmed. And when I'm anxious. And when I have so many feelings churning around inside me that I can't respond to or process. I retreat, I avoid. When I don't know what to do with the sheer volume and profundity of my feelings I find that the only thing I can muster to do is bury inside of myself.* 

I sense intuitively that this response is very unhealthy. (Also, see peer-reviewed research on the efficacy of avoidance as a defense mechanism. Overwhelming.)

So if I can't beat the confusion with avoidance, then I'll reach for clarity some other way. It's time for me to make a list of the things I know.

I know I love people, and people love me.

(And that when I feel most like tunneling inward, it is imperative that I reach outward.)

I know I like this CD. 

I know my family will have a happy Christmas.

I know that Urbana is coming whether I'm ready or not, and that will be fine.

I know that the summer and beyond is a question mark, and that will also be fine.

I know that all will be well. ("You can ask me how, but only time will tell.")

I know that He is closer than my own heartbeat, that He will never leave me, that He is faithfully rooting up the ugliness in my heart and that He is leading me in the way everlasting.

*Or blog. Sometimes I blog. There's some masochistic relief in vomiting my anxiety onto the internet.